Notes
Return of the Turkey Trot in Marion. This race went surprisingly well last year and apparently that trend continued this year. Nate Hopp was at the race and since I haven't been feeling great I figured he would probably get the best of me today and wanted to just run my own race. Nate went out hard with another guy on him (Nate pointed him out to me before the race. He is just a year out of high school but he was a multiple time state champ.) I settled into 3rd pretty quickly after getting through some high school runners, but I was still quite a bit behind the front two. I looked over my shoulder on one of the first turns and saw Nutmeg and Rebel behind me but I decided I was feeling good and would go after the front two. They probably got a gap of ~50m or so at one point, I'm having trouble remembering to be honest, but it seemed like a big lead that early in the race. But by the mile I was starting to bring them back.
I actually caught them quicker than I had expected and the younger guy was starting to pull away from Nate at this point. I went by Nate pretty quickly and got right behind the leader. This was probably around the two mile mark and at this point I thought I had a pretty good chance of winning. The other guy was breathing harder than me already so I assumed he would falter within the next couple of miles. The 3rd mile we basically ran side by side and I was feeling really good. I actually debated trying to go off the front but I really didn't know where exactly we were at in the race so I decided to wait. That was probably a good idea because one of the turns was a lot further than I had expected and made me second guess how far we still had to go. That mental error might have been what cost me and I started to lose the leader a little before the 4 mile mark. I kept thinking if I kept him close enough I could possibly kick and get him, but instead I just kept slowly losing ground. I was still running pretty well but the chance for victory had passed. I pushed down the last street, before the short turn to the finish, just to try to get a good time, but I could tell my legs were losing it. I kept up a solid pace but no kick happened today.
I turned the corner to see low 25:xx on the timer, and immediately thought that had to be wrong. I ran a really good race but I crossed the line in 25:30 which would be a PR by 15 seconds. And I haven't really done anything recently that resembles PR pace. Typically I don't care if a race is a little short or long but when I PR is on the line I figured I should ask. I believe Nutmeg and Nate both said it was right around 4.9, maybe just a little over, which means it was ~30-40 seconds short. I'm still really pumped with that. Still one of my best 8ks ever and probably similar to the time I ran last year at this race. Also, I ended up losing by 15 seconds which wasn't too bad either.
So overall I'm still shocked by this race. It is a really good feeling to have everything click again and know that I can still run some fast races. It also seems like running in colder weather seems to be better for me. I haven't had any back or breathing issues in the races the last couple of weeks. And while I didn't run the race with them, it was still a great day with Rebel and Nutmeg. We all were more than satisfied with our races and were able to enjoy a post race breakfast after winning pies. This race definitely has to stay on the calendar.